New on Sports Illustrated: Weekend Hot Clicks: Ed Orgeron's Dramatic Transformation at LSU

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It's bowl season and this weekend's hot clicks is all college football. We look at Ed Orgeron, the current Playoff format and more.

Bow to Your Queen

Mocked to Applauded

You’ve heard the saying: About 87,000 people were at Jordan-Hare Stadium for the Kick Six, but three hundred thousand people will tell you they were at Jordan-Hare Stadium for the Kick Six. The same applies to Ed Orgeron’s dramatic transformation over the last four months.

Everyone has always loved Ed Orgeron the person. Not everyone has always loved Ed Orgeron the head coach. This is my most underrated storyline of the college football season: How quickly Orgeron went from a beloved person and widely mocked head coach to beloved person and widely applauded head coach.

I didn’t think Orgeron would work at LSU. Sure, maybe he'd win nine or 10 games and have LSU in late-season playoff contention, but 13-0 with one of the best teams of all time (and the best playoff QB of all time)? How many people on the planet sincerely believed—truly, sincerely believed, not optimistic “well, maybe if” believed—Orgeron could do this?

Plus-One Playoff

On the weekend of the sixth College Football Playoff, Jason Kirk brings back a once kicked-around playoff format he believes would’ve been better: The Plus-One System.

“In a Plus-One system, not only do bowls remain, they become more important than ever. In the Playoff era, two bowls are semifinals, but in a Plus-One era, we’d usually get semifinal vibes from three, four, or five bowls (based on my look at how these would’ve lined up since 1990).”

What do you want? The current four-team format, eight-team format or this Plus-One system? I’m still aboard the four-team train.

Hannah Ferguson

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